LovebirdNovice
03-26-2018, 10:24 AM
Hi,
I really hope someone can give us some good advice on how to go about creating a more fulfilling life for our little boy! Please bear with me as this may be a fairly long post; I just want to make sure I give as much background as possible to our dilemma!!
I work for a city farm in London (UK). We mainly have farm animals (sheep, goats, horses, cows,chickens, ducks, alpacas and so on(albeit in small numbers as we have a very small farm) and provide opportunities for city dwellers to experience the sights, sounds (and smells!) of the countryside. Alongside our farm animals we also have a number of smaller animals and an aviary containing a mix of finches, budgies, canaries and cockatiels that all get along really well. A few months back someone came to the farm with a pair of lovebirds in a small cage that they had 'rescued' from the reception desk of a business and asked us to take them on. I should stress we are not a re-homing centre and the only reason we took them in was because I grew up with parents that had multiple aviaries and everything from tiny finches to large parrots so I have a soft spot for 'foreign birds' and felt we could offer them a better existence than a small cage on a reception desk. Despite growing up in that environment my specific bird care knowledge is fairly limited but I did know enough to know not to introduce 'Bonnie & Clyde' into our aviary as I know Lovebirds can be quite terratorial. Instead, we put them into a large flight cage in our farm office where they settled in happily and had space to stretch their wings.
Some time after 'moving in' we noticed that they had started making a nest and mating and not long after that Bonnie (as we had named her) started laying eggs. The first clutch were infertile (we gave them an extra two weeks beyond what we'd researched as the incubation time on the internet just to be sure). A couple of weeks later she laid another clutch but again these didn't hatch. I was worried at this stage about her 'over laying' so we left this clutch for almost a month over time before removing them.
A couple of weeks after removing her eggs she started laying again, the first two eggs were laid with no problem but devastatingly we believe she became egg bound with the third (we tried lubricating her vent and increasing the office temperature (based on advice gleaned again from the internet) but sadly she passed away a couple of days later.
So now, we are left with a lonely male. He isn't bonded to us and, as he isn't at all tame, is probably not likely to at this stage? Our intention was always to try to raise the money (we are a charity) to build a separate aviary for Bonnie and Clyde to live in and we have now raised the funds required to do this. We could keep Clyde in his cage in the office and let him live alone but we'd really like to offer him something more from life. We've read lots of articles on line about introducing a new partner but want to see if there may be 'another way' and this is where we'd like the advice of people more experienced - hence joining this group.
What we'd like to do is build the new aviary and then, ideally, create a small colony of Lovebirds (including Clyde) to live in it. So here are our questions:
Is this a feasible option?
Should we try to find a number of individual lovebirds that don't 'know' each other? (We're thinking of having a colony of three or four pairs)?
Should we put them all into the new aviary at the same time so there are no territorial issues and let them find their own pairings or will we need to keep them in separate cages but in close proximity to let them get used to each other first?
Are we being completely naive in thinking we can make this work?
It's probably obvious by now that we need all the advice we can get - thank you for taking the time to read this post if you've got this far and please give us any advice you can on how to best go about getting Clyde a new friend and, ideally, a group of new friends!
Thank you,
Carol
I really hope someone can give us some good advice on how to go about creating a more fulfilling life for our little boy! Please bear with me as this may be a fairly long post; I just want to make sure I give as much background as possible to our dilemma!!
I work for a city farm in London (UK). We mainly have farm animals (sheep, goats, horses, cows,chickens, ducks, alpacas and so on(albeit in small numbers as we have a very small farm) and provide opportunities for city dwellers to experience the sights, sounds (and smells!) of the countryside. Alongside our farm animals we also have a number of smaller animals and an aviary containing a mix of finches, budgies, canaries and cockatiels that all get along really well. A few months back someone came to the farm with a pair of lovebirds in a small cage that they had 'rescued' from the reception desk of a business and asked us to take them on. I should stress we are not a re-homing centre and the only reason we took them in was because I grew up with parents that had multiple aviaries and everything from tiny finches to large parrots so I have a soft spot for 'foreign birds' and felt we could offer them a better existence than a small cage on a reception desk. Despite growing up in that environment my specific bird care knowledge is fairly limited but I did know enough to know not to introduce 'Bonnie & Clyde' into our aviary as I know Lovebirds can be quite terratorial. Instead, we put them into a large flight cage in our farm office where they settled in happily and had space to stretch their wings.
Some time after 'moving in' we noticed that they had started making a nest and mating and not long after that Bonnie (as we had named her) started laying eggs. The first clutch were infertile (we gave them an extra two weeks beyond what we'd researched as the incubation time on the internet just to be sure). A couple of weeks later she laid another clutch but again these didn't hatch. I was worried at this stage about her 'over laying' so we left this clutch for almost a month over time before removing them.
A couple of weeks after removing her eggs she started laying again, the first two eggs were laid with no problem but devastatingly we believe she became egg bound with the third (we tried lubricating her vent and increasing the office temperature (based on advice gleaned again from the internet) but sadly she passed away a couple of days later.
So now, we are left with a lonely male. He isn't bonded to us and, as he isn't at all tame, is probably not likely to at this stage? Our intention was always to try to raise the money (we are a charity) to build a separate aviary for Bonnie and Clyde to live in and we have now raised the funds required to do this. We could keep Clyde in his cage in the office and let him live alone but we'd really like to offer him something more from life. We've read lots of articles on line about introducing a new partner but want to see if there may be 'another way' and this is where we'd like the advice of people more experienced - hence joining this group.
What we'd like to do is build the new aviary and then, ideally, create a small colony of Lovebirds (including Clyde) to live in it. So here are our questions:
Is this a feasible option?
Should we try to find a number of individual lovebirds that don't 'know' each other? (We're thinking of having a colony of three or four pairs)?
Should we put them all into the new aviary at the same time so there are no territorial issues and let them find their own pairings or will we need to keep them in separate cages but in close proximity to let them get used to each other first?
Are we being completely naive in thinking we can make this work?
It's probably obvious by now that we need all the advice we can get - thank you for taking the time to read this post if you've got this far and please give us any advice you can on how to best go about getting Clyde a new friend and, ideally, a group of new friends!
Thank you,
Carol